Fort Wayne, Indiana has a very rich and storied military history going back hundreds of years. At some point before recorded history, native tribes vied for control of the Three Rivers area for the same reasons that European powers would come to value it – access to the Wabash and Maumee River basins for ease of trade. A Miami Indian town was eventually established here known as Kekionga – which grew to become the capital city of the Miami. Other tribes such as the Delaware and Shawnee also established towns near the three rivers and in time, the Europeans came to establish trade networks.
It was because of its importance as a trading hub and for control of the three rivers, that the French, English, and Americans would all build military installations and trading posts at the Three Rivers. This led to several military confrontations between the native tribes and their would-be suitors. Below we’ll attempt to describe some of those encounters for our readers, and do so as objectively as possible with equal attention given to the native tribes who were eventually pushed out of Fort Wayne, to our collective loss.
A Brief History of the 44th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Civil War Regiment – from Fort Wayne, Indiana